This Ex-Air Force Officer Struck It Rich With Security Company FireEye (FEYE)

Friday

Mar 7, 2014 at 3:32 PM

Julie Bort

Shares of newly public company FireEye have been going so crazy lately that the company decided to sell off a bunch more of them on Friday, in a secondary offering. And many of its other stakeholders joined in the selling party.

Among them was Kevin Mandia, a former U.S. Air Force officer who founded Mandiant, a security firm that FireEye bought in January for $1.05 billion. FireEye paid $106.5 million in cash and the rest in stock.

The CEO of FireEye, David DeWalt, told Business Insider that this was like an IPO for Mandia.

"Today was a proud moment for Kevin Mandia. It was a chance for our Mandiant asset to go IPO," DeWalt said.

DeWalt also shared a fun fact about FireEye and Mandiant: both companies were founded on the same day in 2004. So maybe their marriage was destiny?

A total of 14 million shares were put on sale for the secondary offering, priced at $82, 5.6 million from the company and the rest from other stake holders, including Mandia. He sold 227,586 shares. At $82 per share, that's almost $18.7 million.

FireEye has only been a public company for about six months. It held a successful IPO in September, initially pricing shares at $20. In the past few weeks, shares zoomed over 370%, briefly hitting a high of $96, and at that price, turning its founder Ashar Aziz into a billionaire.

At $82 a share, Aziz's net worth is down, but he's probably not crying about it. He cashed out of over 1 million shares today, too. (At $82, he nabbed $88.7 million.)

The success of both founders is "very rewarding for me and the directors," DeWalt says. DeWalt is best known as the former CEO of McAfee who sold the antivirus company to Intel for $7.8 billion. He also led Documentum to its $1.7 billion acquisition by EMC.

But this is the first taste of the big time for both Aziz and Mandia.

Aziz grew up in Pakistan and put himself through school at MIT before founding his company. Mandia grew up Pennsylvania and was an officer in the U.S. Air Force before founding his company.

After today's sale, Mandia currently owns 3,023,640 shares, or a 2.1% stake in FireEye. He also joined the company as COO.

See Also:

This Was The Best Advice Steve Ballmer Ever GotShares Of Newly Public Company FireEye Have Gone Nuts, And They've Turned This Man Into A BillionaireTwo Computer Scientists Who Met At Stanford Are Conspiring Against LinkedIn